Editorial

With this new issue comes our first of 2025 after what’s felt like a punishing year in Aotearoa New Zealand. With job losses across the country, in particular 11.6% of jobs in Wellington being cut, our elected officials forging ahead in their attempts to disempower Māori and undermine our founding document Te Tiriti o Waitangi, while abandoning our most vulnerable and, as an added bonus, fast tracking our path to an unliveable climate, the word ‘crisis’ is starting to lose meaning. New horrors emerge in Palestine and out of the United States, until it feels like any positive news is a cruel trick played to make us look away.

It feels like, given the platform, I ought to have something grand and meaningful to say in the face of all this, but there’s a sense that so many things have already been said, and nothing has changed. I’m also not convinced anyone reads editorials, which is really just a way of admitting that I myself don’t read them—and I can understand why you’d turn immediately to any of the number of brilliant works in this issue over my ramblings here. There is some freedom in not knowing if anyone will read it—like a first book, you can write what you really feel without fear of criticism or an audience. I understand the irony of that statement coming from a reviews editor, whose own job is to commission (respectful and intelligent) criticism of those very books. (To keep things fair, if anyone does want to level judgements at me for this editorial, I welcome them.) 

But at the end of the day I can only reiterate what those braver and wiser than me have said: Be strong, stand up for what’s right even in the face of what seems like hopelessness, and look after yourself and those around you. The people in power are relying on us giving up. Do everything you can not to.

Having recently read Shilo Kino’s novel All That We Know (Moa Press, 2024), I’ve been thinking a lot about the power of what we say online and how we say it. Poet Stacey Teague also said something to me recently that has played in my head on repeat since: ‘I’m happy to sit my ass down and listen.’ Maybe I don’t have much that is new to say, but we could all be better listeners and readers. I’d start with issue 113.

On behalf of the team at takahē, thanks for your ongoing support. With the current funding situation and instability in the arts, it means more than ever. We also farewell co-chair Erica Stretton, who is a staunch supporter of New Zealand literature and who will be sorely missed around the (virtual) takahē office.

Thanks for reading issue 113. We hope you enjoy it.

Mauri ora,

Ash Davida Jane
Reviews Co-Editor